If you have built a new product or released a new feature, you know the excitement of shipping it and the nervousness of seeing results as soon as it is out in the market. You want your feature to perform well from the start. After all, you and your team have put in hours of time and effort to get here. If you see the fitting numbers, it is a success, a job well done, and it is time to celebrate. But, if the day following the launch does not meet expectations, you might take it as a sign of failure. But wait! Before you decide the fate of the feature, stop and think — is it too early for you to make a conclusion?
Early success is a good sign, though you might want to wait for the demand to stabilize. Unfavorable data, on the other hand, might not be a failure just yet. The mere creation and release of a feature are sometimes not enough. You might have some more work to increase awareness; You might need to pour in some energy to nurture it and create excitement for people to realize its value. Let me give you an example.
A baker opened a bakery in a small town. She sold the usuals — fresh loaves of bread, baguettes, and pastries. People loved her wares. She had a regular stream of customers. She made enough money to sustain her business but wanted to expand beyond her small shop.
She researched the competition and realized that none of the other shops in the town sold anything other than traditional baked goods. She wondered — what if she tried new flavors and experimented with products? She had identified a gap in the market and saw an opportunity. After weeks of testing and trying, she came up with new bread flavors — sesame, honey, pistachios; she also added muffins and flaky pastries to her store. When she started selling her new products, she had expected customers to come flocking to buy the new items or try them. Instead, she saw just a handful of customers tasting the novelties. The new wares were clearly visible on display and the menu, but customers didn’t ask for them. Customers would come to her store, exchange greetings, buy the usual, and leave.
She wondered, “What happened?”
She noticed that the few customers who had tried the new flavors did repurchase them, which validated that the new flavors were good. She realized that customers either did not notice the new wares or didn’t know when to eat these unique flavors as they wouldn’t fit in the regular meal. Perhaps, the users lacked the “trigger” for use.
Instead of leaving it to chance for customers to inquire, what if she started advertising the new products? Thus creating awareness about new flavors, suggesting combinations, and how and when it fits in their meal. She started introducing the products to customers — asking them if they were interested in trying a flavorful soft sesame bread that goes well as an evening snack with tea. Over the next few weeks, she gradually started seeing demand rising. Over the next year, her sesame bread became the best-selling product, far exceeding the sales of traditional products.
Let’s take a real example — the voice assistant. Apple first released Siri in 2011, Amazon released Alexa in 2014, and Microsoft released Cortana in 2014. It was not until recent years, with a tremendous push from the creators, that those voice assistants became ubiquitous. They didn’t give up, and I’m glad they didn’t. How else would I have set my morning and bedtime routine of devices in my home? How else would I turn on lights from the comfort of my couch? Or get a reminder when I need it?
Despite the initial hypothesis validation and testing, you might not see success when you release a feature. That does not mean it is not valuable; it might be that users are not aware of the feature or don’t realize how it fits in their lives for good. Give it some love, create some buzz, give it some time, and it might grow to become a success.
